The Lisette Sew Along - Dabbling All Day

I have another super-cute version of the Continental Dress to show you today by Nicole.

She worked all day on Sunday, came home and made the dress from scratch, and then wore it to a picnic on Monday. How perfect!


In other exciting news.... did you know that Spotlight have a new blog?

I didn't.... until Cindy tweeted me this....

Sew-Along Sign Up
Link to Pattern
Sew-Along Flickr Group
Sew Lisette Flickr Group

Predictable

Predictions.... they can come true.

Nikki Cardigan predicted that Moo Moo would want one too. I got a phone call at 8PM Monday night.... and a little voice on the other end said "Hello Cam, can you please make me a car roll up too?".

How could I say no?

So this mornings job is to search the stash for some cute boy friendly fabrics.

In other boy news, I received a very nice email from Spotlight Customer Service on Monday. Although my local store currently has nothing in stock for boys, I'm assured that they do have three new ranges which are being released in early April. There's one named Bot Camp (think robots) which looks pretty cute. I appreciated their very quick response.

Sometimes my budget just can't stretch to expensive designer fabrics, and I need something cheap and cheerful to fall back on (especially when it comes to birthday pressies for three year olds)!

An endangered species

Little Cars Fabric available from Retromummy

I tootled down to Spotlight today in search of some fabric with a car print as I have some little boy birthdays coming up very soon...

I searched the entire shop and couldn't find anything AT ALL for boys. No camo prints, no skull and crossbones, NOTHING!

So I decided to ask what happened to the teeny tiny section that was called Boyzone. I was told that the boyzone fabrics have been discontinued, and they have nothing is stock, unless I could find something on the clearance table. They said that the decision had been made by Head Office.

What the????? Have boys all of a sudden become an endangered species in the fabric world?

The most useless fabric shop in the world

Everyone in Australia knows exactly which shop I'm talking about...

I drove to Spotlight today to pick up some water soluble stabiliser so that I could do a bit more crazy stitching. I have a project in mind that I'm going to make, but it just won't work without using stabiliser, and I don't have enough in the stash.

I'm apologising in advance for the excruciatingly bad grammar but I'm too angry to add any!

I arrive at the haberdashery counter and take a number and wait......

15 year old girl calls my number
I ask for water soluble stabiliser
She asks me to repeat what I want
I ask for water soluble stabiliser
She says she doesn't know what it is.... and asks how to pronounce it
WATER SOLUBLE STABILISER
She asks the other 15 year old girl behind the counter and she has no clue either
She then says that they probably don't stock it
I say I bought some here less than 2 weeks ago, so you do stock it
She says I should try the dress counter
I say I bought it at the haberdashery counter less than 2 weeks ago, and tell her to ask a supervisor
She finds and asks a supervisor who also has no clue....
They then proceed to tell me that I should just come back during the week when the full timers are working, because they'll know what I'm talking about!

WHAT THE????

Can somebody please (pretty please) open a proper fabric / haberdashery shop in the Western suburbs? I promise I'll be your best customer.

Does the size of the bag tell the story?

I toddled off to Spotlight thismorning to buy myself a cutting knife for the Hoppo Bumpo stencil-along.....
I had completely run out of polyfill so I grabbed a small size bag...

I must say that I was very dissapointed. My local Spotlight usually has 6 remnant bins spread throughout the different fabric sections, but today there were only 2 (I'm assuming that they hid the other 4 out the back so they can bring them back out tomorrow when it's not 20% off)! I rifled through them and found myself some corduroy and some denim.

I bought some printed flannel to make some baby wraps. There wasn't much of a selection in the flannel today either...

Some gingham and spots to make bias binding.....

.....a couple of prints just because they were cute.

....and I almost forgot....but I did find a cutting knife with 8 spare blades...perfect!

Love Fridays.....part 2

I'm back from Spotlight......

This time I decided to try a different approach. I didn't take a basket or a trolley at the entrance. I decided that I could only buy what I could juggle in one armload.


I found some cotton that co-ordinates perfectly with Stacey's fabric....

Now that I can use my overlocker, I can start collecting overlocker thread!

.....and I found these three fabrics. The blue floral is much prettier in real life....I found it in the remnants bin, 2 metres for $3. The middle one was on one of the special tables for $4 per metre. It's sort of a heavy weight cotton. The one on the right was $2 per metre from a different specials table.

So I managed to juggle 4 reels of cotton, 4 reels of overlocker thread, a folded up piece of fabric from the remnants bin, and 2 rolls of fabric in one armload....

Now I can spend my Friday night planning Stacey's apron...yippee!

I forgot to add.... Friday night is the best time to shop at my local Spotlight because there are hardly any customers and never any lines at the cutting desk.